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Research began to focus on police-protester interactions and scholars began to collect specific information on protest activity, inspired by the pioneering work of Tilly

Scholars began to routinely collect information on:

Types and level of violence used by protesters

Numbers of participants at events

Degree of organization

Tactics used by protesters

The information collected on protesters was coupled with specific details about how police responded to protesters, such as:

Whether police showed up at an event

The degree of violence police used

Whether arrests were made

Findings from this research:

Clear and consistent

Police are more likely to act (and to act in an aggressive manner) when protesters are violent, numerous, directly challenging political authorities, organized, and using multiple or innovative tactics

This is the threat or behavioral threat model of protest policing (Soule and Davenport 2009)

Threat model has advanced the understanding of protest policing, especially by paying explicit attenion to how the police and government agents consider protesters' behavior

African American Threat and Police Response

Three primary literatures:

Systemic Racism Theory

For example, scholars of systemic racism hold that black political claims-making is a straightforward instance of a "hierarchical interaction" between an oppressed group and its oppressor.

In such instances, whites and institutions they control will react swiftly and harshly because such claims-making threatens the ideological white supremacist project that is characteristic of systemic racism

Group Position/Threat, and specifically Racial Threat

Used extensively to examine how the relative size of the African American population affects various facets of the criminal justice system

For example, scholarship associated with this approach finds that an increase in the relative size of the back population increases the amount of resources provided to:

Basic criteria for protest to be included: more than one participant, participants at event must articulate a claim, event must happen in United States

Data Collected from New York Times (1960-1990)

Description Bias

How well/poorly a newspaper reporter describes what happened at a given event; hard facts

Selection Bias

Not all protest will be covered by a newspaper

Larger, more violent events, events with conflict or significant figures, events within proximity to newspaper's headquarters

DV: Police showed up to protest event or not

Made Arrests, Used Physical Force/Violence, Made Arrests and Used Physical Force/Violence, or Did Nothing

IVs: Protest Size, Counter-demonstrators Present, Protesters use of Confrontational Tactics or Use of Less Confrontational Tactics, Protesters Damage of Property, Tactic Variety used by Protesters, Protesters use of Violence, Political Nature of Protest

Hypothesis: African American protest events are more likely than other events to be policed.

Results

African American protest events are more likely to draw police presence, even when controlled for behavioral threat measures

Police are more likely to make arrests, use force/violence, and use force/violence with arrests at events with African Americans present

Protesting While Black is historically bounded

Extremely confrontational tactics, use of violence, and use of multiple tactics trigger various kinds of police response

Conclusion

Results are only sometimes consistent with Driving While Black

Different Racial groups experienced the right to protest freely unevenly across the 1960 to 1990 period

Research cannot discern if disproportionate policing of African Americans is due to racism on the part of the individual officer